


you're with me on the other side

by ouimonsieur



Category: Grey's Anatomy, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: 2 x 16 au, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Daemon Touching, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 04:01:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouimonsieur/pseuds/ouimonsieur
Summary: Caesar had barreled through the door, though, hooves skidding on tile, and now wouldn’t leave. Not that Meredith would want him to. Something about having one hand on a bomb made a person want to keep their soul nearby. She stood with one hand on a missile in a body cavity, surrounded by a dying man’s organs, and the other on Caesar’s forehead, in the gap between his antlers, fingertips slowly stroking the strip of softer fur behind his ears. The whites of his eyes shown, but he was completely still. They were doctors. They didn’t crack.(his dark materials au of "its the end of the world" & "as we know it")





	you're with me on the other side

Normally, daemons weren’t allowed in the OR. Daemons were supposed to stay in the scrub room, because of sanitary concerns about feathers and fur and scales versus skin, and watch through the glass for the duration of the operation. They were careful, when building operating rooms, to build them so that the surgeons would be comfortable, could stand hours-long operations without having to strain the bond. The scrub room’s windows were outfitted with bars, perches for smaller daemons, and at heights that most larger ones could comfortably see through, not liking to be separated from their other halves by more than glass.

Caesar had barreled through the door, though, hooves skidding on tile, and now wouldn’t leave. Not that Meredith would want him to. Something about having one hand on a bomb made a person want to keep their soul nearby. She stood with one hand on a missile in a body cavity, surrounded by a dying man’s organs, and the other on Caesar’s forehead, in the gap between his antlers, fingertips slowly stroking the strip of softer fur behind his ears. The whites of his eyes shown, but he was completely still. They were doctors. They didn’t crack.

Meredith raised her eyes, took in Burke with eyes wide, still kneeling, hands spread in shock. His Lenore was plastered to his leg, ears flattened to her skull. Meredith focused on her hands, on the left, pressed to the flat of Caesar’s skull, feeling his faint, panted breaths. On the right, surrounded by the barely-warm of a body, fingertips supporting the weight of something dense. Metal. 

Cristina rose, slowly, glancing through the glass at Mordecai, always the professional, reared onto his back legs, paws pressed to the window. “Meredith.”

“What did I do?”

“Oh God, Meredith.”

Caesar took a deep, shuddering sigh, pushing his head minutely harder into the heel of Meredith’s hand.

Dylan stands, palm outward. His daemon stood by his side, a terrier, already in bomb gear. “Just stay where you are. Nobody move.” 

His eyes locked onto Meredith, raising his hand in supplication. She could feel her heartbeat, pulsing blood through her body. Her pulse was rocketing in her throat.

“Stay exactly where you are.”

For the first time, Meredith looked down at the man on the table, at her hand impaling him, through the burned flesh, surrounded by bloodstained surgical cloths. Her white glove, pulled to mid forearm, was bloody where it came into contact with his body. She took a deep breath, shifting her eyes instead to the hand now desperately frozen atop Caesar’s head. She focused on his fur, the smooth brown transitioning to a deeper black at the tips, on the way that it swirled at the base of his ears.

“What did I do?” She heard it before it felt like she’d opened her mouth, and once she started, she couldn’t stop, eyes unfocused on Caesar’s face. “What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?”

-

Odessa would ride on Derek’s shoulder for most of the day. She sat in the junction between chest and neck, tail curled down his back, chattering in Derek’s ear. It was, she confided in Caesar, because she wanted to be able to see charts. Derek and Odessa had a joke between the two of them, a joke that Meredith and Caesar had briefly been in on, before everything had fallen apart, that they had only gone to med school because of Odessa’s hands.  
“How,” Derek would joke, “am I supposed to resist a calling like that? They were meant for a scalpel. It’s either that or cat burgling.”

Odessa would snatch things out of Derek’s hands, from pens to his cell phone, and hold them to her masked face, scratching her chin or narrowing her eyes in thought, until Derek good-naturedly grabbed them back, making a quip about how, technically, she wasn’t the doctor.

Inevitably, Odessa would huff, and somehow end up in Caesar’s antlers, weighing his head comically to one side as he protested that “no, no, it’s fine,” and would allow her to steer him around to follow Derek, pulling at their bond until it began to twinge and he would lower Odessa to the ground. She would scurry back up to her perch on Derek’s shoulder, and Meredith would always catch him looking at Caesar with his sad eyes, the ones that crinkle at the corners like a smile but without the happiness that would light up his face. 

Caesar and Odessa don’t get to spend much time together anymore. Sometimes, when Meredith’s had too much to drink and it’s late at night, Caesar will lie against her headboard and Meredith will nestle into his side, curling into each other in sadness and solidarity. These were the only times when Caesar would break, whispering to Meredith how much he missed them, how different it felt without them, and all Meredith could do was sob and stroke his flank with her knuckles, wet face pressed into his shoulder and hair caught up in his antlers.

Sometimes, the mornings after these nights, Meredith would wake to a gentle knock on her door, and George and Clifford would stride in with a steaming cup of coffee and something to crow about, often literally, and Caesar would go back to silence.

-

When she’d woken up that morning, sure she was going to die, she’d looked Caesar in the eye and knew that he felt it too. She’d woken up long before her alarm, and before any of their housemates could begin to coax them out of bed, and had simply rested her hand on Caesar’s back, staring at the ceiling. It was unimaginable that he wouldn’t be there in a few hours.

She’d seen dusted daemons before, of course. She was a surgeon. Death was a regular part of the job. She’d seen it all, from tropical birds to iridescent beetles. It never got any easier, though. Seeing someone’s soul disappear, leaving no trace they were even there. Poetic, she supposed, but also sad. Needlessly sad. 

Didn’t that seem to be everything lately. 

When Meredith was younger, she’d been ashamed of Caesar. He’d settled young, as a fawn, young and frail looking, as if he’d be blown over by the slightest breeze. He was spotted and wet-eyed and one of the most fragile things she’d ever seen. Of course, as Meredith had gotten often, she didn’t look much better. As they grew, it took time to accustom to the amount of room he took up. It was difficult to avoid exes when your daemon had branches poking out of his head at eye-level. Even when he’d curled up to his smallest he hadn’t fit comfortably in her dorm bed with her, leading to many cramped necks for both of them every morning after an attempt. It was impossible for her to stay incognito for any length of time, Caesar was too distinctive. She’d resented him for years.

She’d mentioned this to Derek, once, lying in her bed, staring at his profile across the length of her pillow. Their daemons were curled together at the foot of the bed, Odessa slowly stroking the length of Caesar’s long foreleg, his eyes half lidded in contentment.

“We hated it. When Caesar settled.”

He’d turned to her, brows furrowed, blue eyes concerned. “What do you mean?”

“Suddenly, he took up so much space. We were both growing, and both got bigger and bigger, and neither of us were ready.” She sighed, shifted her eyes to the ceiling, feeling vulnerable. “I avoided, my whole childhood. Avoided my mother. My father. Other kids. It was just me and Caesar. And then one day we couldn’t hide anymore,” her eyes traces the joint of the ceiling and wall, the slightly plaster-softened corner. “And I blamed him.”

Meredith could hear as Derek shifted on his pillow, angling his head down to look at their daemons. Odessa was murmuring, one hand resting on a tine of Caesar’s antler, his head resting on the sheets.

“I think he fits,” he said softly, watching as Caesar blinked open one dark eye. “You’re both…graceful.”

Meredith could feel the tips of her ears burn, shifting to look at Derek just as his hand made an aborted movement toward the foot of the bed, as if reaching out for something he wasn’t allowed.

“Should’ve been a dancer,” she joked, uncomfortable with the sudden weight in the room. She rolled onto her side, pushing closer to Derek.

Derek brought his hand up immediately, instinctively, smoothing the junction of her neck and jaw with a thumb. He hummed, still looking at Caesar, before raising his blue eyes to hers. “Yeah. Should’ve been a dancer.”

-

Now, Meredith could picture him. Derek. Could picture his scrubs, always the dark blue, his stupid little fisherman-themed scrub caps with the stupid curls tumbling out onto the nape of his stupid neck, Odessa perched on his shoulder, striped tail twitching anxiously. The rest of the OR melted away, softened, like they were spot-lit.

“I’m scared.” Meredith hadn’t realized how badly she needed to say it until it came out. And God, she was. She was trembling, slightly, her surgeon’s hands compromised by her own mortality. Caesar blinked his wet eyes, looking at Derek.

“We’re scared.”

This was when the tears welled up in Meredith’s eyes. Caesar wasn’t like Odessa, or Clifford, wouldn’t talk to acquaintances or to patients to build a bond. He only rarely spoke to George or Izzie, and he had barely spoken to Derek when they’d been together. He would speak to other daemons, but in hushed voices, and really only a few words. He was constantly nuzzling Odessa, making physical contact nearly every time they saw each other, regardless of Addison’s presence. On breaks, or their infrequent nights off, he was often curled up with Cristina’s Mordecai, long legs threaded together. He was private, allowed Meredith to do most of the talking. Meredith sucked in a shuddering breath.

As Derek began to speak, it was to Caesar. She could feel the tension leave his neck as Derek murmured, “I know. You can do this.” Odessa wound her way down his body, gripping his the fabric of his scrubs in her tiny hands. “It’ll be over in a second.” Derek turned his gaze to Meredith, eyes warm. “You can do this, Meredith.” Odessa crossed the floor towards Meredith and Caesar, and he lowered his head for her to ascend to her favorite place amidst his antlers. As they touched, Caesar let out a trembling breath, flicking his ears.

Odessa stood up, offering her small paw to Meredith. It was a little odd, how similar their hands looked, if you thought about it. Just like she’s in little latex gloves. Without thinking, Meredith lifts her hand, taken from atop Caesar’s head, pressing her fingertips to Odessa’s.

Now, rationally, Meredith knows that Derek isn’t there. Odessa isn’t there. They’ve evacuated, with the rest of the OR teams, and won’t be anywhere near for hours. Not until her body’s gone cold and Caesar is dusted. This is just a coping mechanism, a way to attain closure before the end, to come to terms with her death, she knows, she’s taken the psych classes.

It’s just that Meredith’s never touched another person’s daemon before. Wanted to, sure, had sudden urges to reach out and throttle Cristina’s maned wolf or smack Izzie’s monarch out of the air, to scoop Odessa up in her arms, hold her until Derek agrees never to leave her again, but it isn’t something that you do.

In her freshman year of college, Meredith had had a boyfriend that, at the time, she’d loved desperately, endlessly, and she let him touch Caesar. It was bright, and hot, and uncomfortable down deep, somewhere she’d never hurt before. She’d shuddered, and Caesar had immediately pushed his long head into her hands, trying to comfort them both. She and the boy had broken up that night.

When stories talk about touching another person’s daemon, it was always between soulmates. It was the height of intimacy, literally having contact with another’s soul, and it was held as a romantic aspiration for young girls, that someday she would find someone she could trust enough to hold her soul in his hands. It was supposed to feel blinding, fierce, safe. It was the ultimate comfort.

What Meredith needs is comfort.

When her palm brushes Odessa’s, she feels it, a bone-deep sense of ease, like a warm drink on the coldest day, like the first shot on a night out, coiling in the pit of her stomach. She gasps, forcing her gaze from their joined hands to see Derek’s face, and.

Derek’s eyes are red, like he’s been crying, and she knows that this is all in her head, but he’s also smiling at her so, so softly, the same smile that had convinced her they would be together for the rest of their lives. He slowly tilts his head to the side, and he gives her that smile, and her heart breaks, and she’s still palm-to-palm with Odessa, and Caesar gives much the same keen that he did when she’d broken her arm in the tenth grade.

She can feel him, is the thing, can feel all of his thoughts swirling under the surface of Odessa’s skin, can feel both of them at the same time, and the intimacy of this moment is suddenly overwhelming. She’s shaking, and she can feel Odessa shaking, feel Derek through her, and it’s too much.

She pulls her hand away, and she sobs, because she knows she’ll never get the real thing, that Derek is with Addison, that even if he wasn’t she still has her hand on a bomb, the only thing keeping her alive the relative stability of her fingertips. She also knows that Derek, this Derek, the Derek in her mind, only feels those things because she wants him to. That this affection couldn’t come from the real thing, and that this is the only taste she’ll ever get of this, this intimacy, the feeling of being someone’s one-and-only.

Derek smiles at her, sadly, like he knows (and he does, because he is her and she knows, knows too well), and he dips his chin, keeping his eyes on hers the entire time.

“Okay.” Her voice cracks, but he doesn’t care. It won’t matter in a moment.

He nods once, final, with the corners of his lips still sympathetically quirked. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> daemon list in case it was unclear:  
> Meredith - stag - Caesar  
> Derek - raccoon - Odessa  
> Cristina - maned wolf - Mordecai  
> Izzie - monarch butterfly - Rosaire  
> George - rooster - Clifford  
> Burke - hare - Lenore
> 
> title from why won't you love me by 5sos, aka my meredith grey anthem


End file.
